Weekend cooking #5: chili

And look at that, almost a whole week of posts focused on the foods I cooked over a weekend.

Here is the final item.

It is a delicious chili, that we ate with our fresh-out-of-the-oven bread.

Yum.

No recipe for this one folks. It is our own invention, which consists of tomatoes, many kinds of beans (including garbanzo, I love to add garbanzo), meat, onion, garlic, green bell pepper, jalapeños, chili powder, salt, pepper, oregano, basil, and the secret ingredient: puréed pumpkin! The pumpkin adds a really nice sweetness and also makes the chili have a nice, thick texture. Since I had baked a pumpkin to get ready for some pies a little later, I had extra to use in the chili.

And in case you were wondering, this is the end of the food posts from the weekend. There will be no post about baking a pumpkin. Or the seeds. Because of course I baked those too.

Weekend cooking #4: granola bars

Most of the grocery stores do not have granola bars, which is something that I normally like to have around. It is good to be able to have some quick food that is healthy and delicious. So I decided it was time to make my own granola bars. I essentially followed this recipe. I didn't use any corn syrup. For the mix-ins I used dried cranberries, dried blueberries, pumpkin seeds, chopped walnuts, and something which I think is flaxseeds.

I am guessing these will come in really handy this week, since we will be quite busy. On Monday I have dance class, and on Tuesday Greg and I start our Swedish course. This is part of the reason I've been cooking and baking, so that we will have a good amount of leftovers for lunches and dinners for a few days before there is time for cooking again.

Weekend cooking #3: bread

This was the kind of bread I had been thinking about making for a week or longer now. I wanted to use a simple recipe that was just flour, water, salt, and yeast. This one does have an egg white brushed on the top, so it is a touch above your most basic bread recipe.

I also thought it was interesting that this recipe required a starter to be made the night before. I always think of sourdough as the only type of bread that needs a starter. I tried reading about it on the interwebs, and the only thing to come of that is that now I want to make some sourdough.

Weekend cooking #2: enchiladas

For dinner on Saturday I made these delicious enchiladas! I think I mostly followed the recipe. I couldn't find green enchilada sauce, so I just used salsa. I also used vegetable broth because that is what I had. I also didn't put any green onions anywhere. And I forgot to get creme fraiche to put on the top. We did have fresh cilantro, which went into the sauce, but we were so anxious to start eating that we forgot to chop some as a garnish.

Despite all of these things, these were absolutely delicious. And absolutely worth the mess.

Weekend cooking #1: cinna-buns

Last weekend turned into a baking and cooking weekend. I've had the idea of baking bread stuck in my head awhile. I wanted to knead some dough! So the first thing I made which required yeast and kneading was this recipe for delicious cinnamon rolls.

This makes a really huge batch for just two people, but oh they are so delicious. I'm eating them at a rate of two per day. No problem.

More food/cooking posts to follow.

immersion blender guessing game

The apartment we found comes with an immersion blender. I never knew the beauty of such a kitchen tool! So here is a fun game. Guess what food I blended! (I'll put the answers way at the end of the post.)

First there was this...

And then this...

And these...

And of course this...

I'm guessing some of these will be easier than others.



(needless space to make sure the answers are out of reach for those who take guessing games seriously)



Like the third one there, which is what I'm eating as I write this.



(again)



Did you guess that one correctly?

Those are fruit smoothies! I've been making them for the past several days for breakfast. This one is primarily a banana and frozen strawberries. It also has a portion of mixed frozen berries (consisting of Gojibär, Havtorn, Blåbär, Björnbär, Tranbär, and Röda vinbär) and also some pear raspberry juice. The smoothie I had made previously was a banana with frozen blueberries, and also the mixed berries, a bit of honey, and orange apple passion fruit juice.

And the others? Did you guess those?

The top photo is hummus. That is what I had for dinner last night, and it was so delicious. I tried buying pre-made hummus from the store here, but it was absolutely terrible, so I had a great motivator for finally making my own hummus. My own is delicious. The store-bought was recently discovered in the back of the fridge growing mold.

And the second photo is soup! It is actually the last bit of leftovers in a yogurt container. This bit of soup was supposed to be Greg's lunch yesterday, but he forgot it at home, which provided me with an opportunity to get a picture of it. Oh but it isn't tomato soup. It is red pepper soup, and I highly recommend making a batch of your own. When I took it to work for lunch, it prompted the comment "nice color!" from a co-worker.

And the smoothies, of course, which we already talked about.

The last photo is possibly the hardest to guess? Because I just took the photo of the food item that we had blended and stored in the freezer for using later. It is pumpkin! (There will be pies in our future.)

Thank you for playing.

Clementine

Today I got a clementine from the fruit bowl in the office. The fruit bowl is a fantastic feature that I keep meaning to mention.

My clementine was really quite sour and it reminded me of that time I found a lemon in a fruit bowl at a conference and I ate it. Then I remembered I blogged about it here.

So that's that.